Chapter Fifteen
ARIA
Cannes is prettier than the pictures.
That's my first coherent thought as I step out of the café with a paper cup of coffee in one hand and a still-warm chocolate pastry in the other.
The sea is bright enough to hurt your eyes, the buildings all cream and blush and weathered gold, and every narrow street looks like it was designed by someone trying to make the rest of the world feel ugly by comparison.
I should resent it.
This place has lived in my head for years. In stories my father told over bakery cookies and coffee. In my mother's paintings. In every version of my life that used to exist before reality got hold of it and wrung it dry.
Instead, I feel strangely calm.
Light.
Like stepping outside after hours in a windowless room.
When I left the villa this morning, Everett was already in the office.
The room sits just off the main living area behind a set of tall French double doors with glass panes all the way down.
From the terrace, from the kitchen, from the sweeping staircase—everywhere in the villa, really—you can see straight into it.
He was already in there when I came downstairs, sleeves rolled, head bent over his laptop, phone at his ear, the doors shut like he was sealing himself inside a display case.
Visible.
Untouchable.
Very Everett.
He glanced up once when I told him I was going into town, gave me a clipped nod, and went right back to whatever deal or crisis or spreadsheet had his attention.
So I left.
And now I'm standing on a sun-drenched street in Cannes with a coffee I didn't have to make for someone else and nowhere to be but exactly where I want.
That alone feels dangerously close to freedom.
The promenade isn't hard to find. I just follow the water and the crowds and the rows of shops spilling luxury into every window.
Designer bags. Gold sandals. Jewelry that looks too delicate to survive ordinary human life.
There are women in linen trousers and giant sunglasses who look born to belong here, and men with expensive watches and open collars and the kind of tans Seattle billionaires can only buy in twelve-day increments.
I pass them all slowly, drinking in the colors.
The Riviera doesn't do subtle.
The water is too blue. The flowers are too bright. The buildings are too beautiful. Even the air feels saturated—salt and citrus and sun-warmed stone.
My mother would have loved every inch of it.
The thought catches me off guard, sharp enough that I stop walking.
Not because it stings.
Because it doesn't.
Not the way it used to.
For so long, thinking about her felt like opening a wound I could barely survive.
Today it feels like she's here in the edges of things.
In the painted shutters. In the bougainvillea spilling over balconies.
In the language drifting around me like music I grew up hearing before I understood the words.
I take another sip of coffee and keep walking.
The art supply shop almost gets missed.
It's tucked between a boutique selling silk scarves and a little bookstore with sun-faded postcards in the window. Small. Easy to overlook. But the second I see the brushes lined up in a ceramic jar and the stacked canvases in the display, my feet stop moving.
My heart doesn't.
It starts beating too hard.
The paper cup crinkles a little in my hand.
Three years.
That's how long it's been since I let myself do this. Since I stood in front of paint and canvas and possibility and called any of it mine.
I told myself I stopped because life changed. Because my mother died. Because my father needed me. Because grief rearranged everything and art belonged to a version of me that got trapped under the wreckage.
But staring into that tiny shop window, I know that isn't the whole truth.
I stopped because painting made me want things.
And wanting things after the accident felt selfish.
Like betrayal.
Like if I reached for beauty again, I was somehow admitting I could survive losing her.
The bell over the shop door gives a soft jingle when I step inside.
The scent hits me immediately—paper, pigment, wood, oil.
My throat tightens so fast it almost makes me dizzy.
An older woman looks up from behind the counter and smiles like there's nothing unusual at all about a woman standing in the middle of her shop looking like she might either cry or rob the place.
"Bonjour."
"Bonjour," I manage.
I walk slowly, fingertips brushing over familiar things.
Brush handles.
Canvas edges.
Tubes of paint arranged in rows that make my chest ache with how much I used to know without thinking.
Which brands dried faster. Which colors lied in the tube and turned gorgeous on canvas.
How some brushes only looked soft until you tried to make them do detail work and realized they were traitors.
My hand closes around a small stretched canvas before my brain catches up.
Then a brush set.
Then paint.
Not too much. Just enough to feel reckless.
Just enough to feel possible.
When I pay, the woman wraps everything carefully in tissue and slips it into a sturdy paper bag like she's packing up something breakable.
She is.
By the time I reach the promenade, the chocolate pastry is long gone and my heart is somewhere in my throat.
I find a place near the water where the foot traffic thins and set the bag down beside me on a low stone wall. The sea stretches out in front of me, blinding and blue and alive in a way Seattle water never tries to be.
I unpack the canvas slowly.
Brushes.
Paint.
A little rag.
My hands don't shake until I actually touch brush to canvas.
The first stroke goes wrong.
The second feels terrifying.
The third feels like I might survive it.
I start with what's in front of me because it's safe. The water. The line where it meets the sky. The white shapes of boats cutting across the blue. The warm blur of buildings climbing the hillside behind the promenade, all honey and blush and faded terracotta.
It's not good.
Or maybe it is. I can't tell anymore.
My hands remember things my brain forgot—the way to hold the brush loose for broad strokes, the way to mix color on instinct rather than thought, the way time disappears when you stop trying to control what's happening on the canvas and just let it happen.
The coastline takes shape in front of me. Impressionistic. Loose. More feeling than accuracy.
That's fine.
That's enough.
I don't need it to be a masterpiece. I just need it to be mine again.
Time slips.
The world narrows.
I stop hearing the crowd. Stop noticing the conversations in French drifting past me. Stop thinking about Everett behind those glass doors back at the villa, sealed off in his office like a man who doesn't know how to exist in the same space as his own honeymoon.
When a voice comes from beside me, I nearly drop the brush.
"That is very good for someone who looks like she's holding a grenade instead of a paintbrush."
I look up.
A man stands a few feet away, takeaway coffee in hand, watching me with easy, unhurried attention that suggests he stopped walking a while ago and I simply didn't notice.
He's handsome in a very European, very unfair sort of way. Dark hair. Olive skin. Linen shirt rolled at the sleeves. Somewhere around forty, maybe, with the kind of quiet confidence that suggests he's used to being listened to.
"Sorry," I say, and I'm not sure if I'm apologizing for the startled look on my face or for the fact that I've apparently been blocking foot traffic with my art supplies like a feral woman who forgot other people exist.
His mouth curves. "Don't apologize. I interrupted."
He steps a little closer, tilting his head at the canvas.
"The light is good," he says. "You understand how it moves on water."
The way he says it, not casually, not as flattery, tells me he actually knows what he’s talking about.
"Thank you," I say.
"How long have you been painting?"
The question lands harder than it should.
"Today?" I laugh once under my breath. "About two hours."
His brows lift slightly.
"Before today," I clarify, "it had been three years."
He studies me for a second with something that isn't pity and isn't curiosity. Closer to recognition.
Then he reaches into his shirt pocket and produces a card. Thick stock. Simple font. A name and an address.
Gabriel Amaury. Galerie Amaury.
"If you keep going," he says, "come find me."
I take the card. "I'm just—this is just for fun. I'm not—"
"I know what it looks like when someone is just having fun." His smile widens slightly. "That is not what this is."
Before I can respond to that, before I can figure out whether it's a compliment or an accusation, he lifts his coffee cup in a small salute and continues down the promenade.
I watch him go.
Then look back down at the card in my paint-smeared fingers.
Galerie Amaury.
I tuck it into my satchel and go back to the canvas.
My hands are steadier now.
The sea keeps stretching out in front of me, ridiculous and blue and impossibly alive, and for the first time in three years I let myself sit inside the feeling of making something without deciding in advance whether it's allowed to matter.
By the time I finally pack up, the sun has shifted lower and the world feels honey-warm and suspended.
The painting isn't finished. Barely half-done, really. But it exists. It's real. Wet paint on canvas that I put there with my own hands after years of telling myself I couldn't.
When I get back to the villa, the paper bag and canvas feel heavier than they should.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
Like I'm carrying proof of something I haven't admitted out loud yet.
The house is quiet when I come through the kitchen doors, but not empty.
Everett is exactly where I knew he'd be.
Behind the glass doors.
Inside the office.
I can see him before he even looks up—sleeves rolled, phone pressed to his ear, one hand braced on the desk as he stares down at something on the screen with all the intensity of a man trying to outrun himself through productivity.
For one second, I just stand there.
Looking at him through the glass.
At how close he is.
At how entirely sealed off he still manages to be.
Then he glances up.
Even through the panes, his eyes go first to the canvas tucked under my arm.
Then the bag.
Then my face.
He says something quickly into the phone, ends the call, and opens one of the doors halfway.
"What's that?"
Not hi.
Not how was your day.
Not even curiosity softened into kindness.
Just those three words.
I hold up the paper bag slightly. "Art supplies."
His gaze sharpens.
"You paint?"
The question catches me off guard. "I used to."
And there it is again. Used to.
His gaze catches on mine, a flicker, gone before I can read it.
Then he nods once, glances at the half-finished canvas under my arm, and says, "Did you have a good day?"
I nearly laugh because it sounds like a script titled How to Make Basic Husband Conversation While Still Emotionally Avoiding Your Wife.
But at least he tried.
"I did," I say.
His eyes stay on me for a beat too long. Or maybe I just notice them more now.
Then he steps back into the office.
The glass door stays partly open behind him.
Not wide.
Not welcoming.
But not shut either.
I notice.
Maybe because I've already started turning his distance into symbols.
Maybe because he makes it too easy.
I set the art supplies on the counter and look out toward the pool glittering in the late afternoon sun.
If Everett wants to spend this trip behind glass, fine.
I'm done waiting for permission to enjoy it.
I head upstairs, change into the blue bikini Everly absolutely packed on purpose, and when I catch myself in the mirror, I don't look like the woman who got fired from the Hawkeyes and cried in her car because her life was collapsing.
I look alive.
That alone feels miraculous.
When I step out onto the terrace and dive into the pool, the water is cool enough to pull a laugh out of me before I can stop it.
And maybe that's the real beginning.
Not the wedding.
Not the ring.
Not the kiss on the arena steps.
This.
Paint under my nails.
Salt in the air.
Sun on my skin.
The sea just beyond the terrace.
And the strange, terrifying realization that France isn't making me fall in love.
It's reminding me that I'm still here.